Re: Shockley, Murray & Hurenstein, etc.

[blecloux <blecloux@MWT.NET>]

Mike:
George K. Cunningham will disagree and may even comment but  I'd also read
Edward S. Herman's critique of Murray and Herrnstein's thesis in his
Triumph of the Market (1995, South End Press).   He cites Stephen Jay
Gould's Mismeasure of Man.    Gould traces the history of
the use of statistics to buttress racist ideology and social and political
discrimination.   First it was craniometry, then "recapitulationism," then
neotony and then IQ testing and theories of a genetic base to IQ.     The
Bell Curve received a lot of coverage in the corporate mainstream
media---way more than was merited by it's importance, Herman argues
(correctly, I think).
Herman has written elsewhere about major scholarly scientific book widely
ignored by, for example, the New York Times, especially where they are
critical of the corporate agenda.
Murray has attacked the welfare state (for the poor mostly, it seems) so his
message fits in nicely with what many decision makers in the corporate media
already believe.

and

Noam Chomsky has some incisive analysis about why researching race and IQ
questions is not even worth pursuing in The Chomsky Reader (1987, Pantheon).
So, for example, he notes that, "Conceivably, there might be some interest
in correlations between partially heritable traits, but if someone were
interested in this question, he would surely not select such characteristics
as race and IQ, each an obscure amalgam of complex properties.   Rather, he
would ask whether there is a correlation between measurable and significant
traits, say, eye color and length of the big toe.   It is difficult to see
how the study of race and IQ, for example, can be justified on scientific
grounds."
Good enough for me.

Brian LeCloux
Richland Center, WI

"When we dream alone, it remains only a dream.
When we dream together, is is not just a dream.
It is the beginning of reality."
Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Brazil

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